California
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I'm not particularly enamored of publicly-owned utilities, but one data point in their favor
Santa Clara uses their own power utility, and their rates are considerably lower than PG&E's.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley_Power
searches
Well, this is SVP's site, so not really an objective source, but I think it makes the point, and I've read about it elsewhere.
https://www.siliconvalleypower.com/residents/rates-and-fees
SVP D-1 average residential rate is $0.182/kWh.
PG&E E-1 average residential rate is $0.422/kWh.
$.18/kWh isn't amazing by US standards, but it's much closer to typical US rates than California as a whole is.
I also experienced much lower rates when I was living in Sacramento, which also has a municipal electric utility SMUD.
Fuck PG&E.
One thing to keep in mind is that I'm pretty sure that PG&E services a lot of rural areas, which are less-densely-populated, and thus more expensive to provide service to.
checks
Yeah.
https://www.pge.com/tariffs/assets/pdf/tariffbook/ELEC_MAPS_Service%20Area%20Map.pdf
There might be government subsidy as well, but looking at PG&E's rate schedule, it's fixed across its service area.
https://www.pge.com/assets/pge/docs/account/rate-plans/residential-electric-rate-plan-pricing.pdf
That probably means that cities are partly footing the cost of providing electricity to rural areas via buying more-expensive electricity than would otherwise be necessary.
If one wants to have this subsidy in place
and one might not
then switching to a local utility would also potentially require adopting some sort of tax.
On the other hand, rural power might just be more expensive, and unreliable, because PG&E has siphoned off maintenance funds towards executive pay and shareholder value.
Why not. The TVA was one of the US's big sucess stories.
I gotta ask. Why do you think adding a profit motive to a monopoly is a good thing?
its 50c/KWh with PGE where im at. And thats the tier 1 rates.
Solar is going up as fast as they can put it up. My tiny server runs 60-70c per day of usage. (60ish watts per hour * 24 hours). Its crazy.